Interesting they wrote 'aeroplane' there, when and why did Americans start using 'airplane' instead I wonder? Hadn't really thought about it but I suppose I assumed the difference had always existed, like 'cell' vs. 'mobile' phones say.
NYT search has 29 results for "aeroplane" between Jan 1, 1890 and Jan 1, 1903.
> TO FLY FROM PIKE'S PEAK.; W.F. Felts Tries His New Aeroplane at Different Altitudes. [Aug. 4, 1897] (followed soon by SNOWSTORM ON PIKE'S PEAK.; W. B. Felts Did Not Attempt His Aeroplane Flight Yesterday.)
If I redo the search with "airplane" then none of the 10 hits seem relevant. They deal with horse racing. (?!)
Google n-grams, with the American English corpus, shows "airplane" didn't become popular until about 1913, overtaking "aeroplane" within about 5 years.